


The Air Shaft Job

by fleurlb



Category: Leverage
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-03
Updated: 2015-01-03
Packaged: 2018-03-04 12:28:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,912
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3067841
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fleurlb/pseuds/fleurlb
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An AU for the Underground Job</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Air Shaft Job

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Valawenel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Valawenel/gifts).



> Written by Just Ruth for Valawenel

The fiddle game had worked too well, and Nate had realized Blackwell was going to blow up the coal mine; Eliot had to find the bomb. He saw an old, battered lunchbox carried by the breadwinner of a family since 1958. 

“He’s here!” Eliot exclaimed. “Cory’s here!”

“Who?” Hardison asked. He was above ground and safe in his van. “Cory? Unless that’s a cute little name you’ve got for the bomb, I’m compelled to remind you of your mission. Find bomb. Dismantle. Save lives.” He didn’t hear an answer. “Eliot?”

The ground trembled and clouds of dust rose out of the mine. “El? Answer me?”

Alarms rang and Troy, the miner who had activated Leverage, was shouting for equipment and organizing the men to save his fellow workers.

Nate’s voice crackled up from below. “Hardison? Eliot? You there? Hello?”

Hardison left the van, and grabbed Troy. “Nate’s down there! I just heard from him.”

“We’re missing five men,” Troy shot back. “One of them is yours.”

“I know,” Hardison breathed.

********

“What are you doing down here?” Eliot grabbed Cory as the boy came running from one of Section Three’s side shafts.

“What you told me to. I thought I could work on the machinery since no one was here.” Cory was pale and looked younger than the eighteen he claimed to be. “Was that an explosion?”

A shiver ran through the strata, and the timbers creaked and groaned.

“Yeah, and we’re in trouble.” Eliot shoved Cory towards an exit shaft, “Go!”

Blackwell’s right hand man, Clark, staggered around the corner with a pick ax in his hand; he was between them and the exit. “The mine’s closed,” he shouted. “You shouldn’t be here.”

“The mine’s falling apart, you fool!” Eliot dropped his belt and helmet. “We need to get out of here.” He grabbed another pick ax. “Run when I tell you,” he ordered Cory.  
Cory nodded, but paused to grab his lunchbox and water bottle.

“Don’t think so,” Clark snarled, sizing Eliot up for battle. There was another rumble.

Clark looked up in alarm.

“Eric!” Cory yelled Eliot’s new identity and yanked him back as the roof collapsed. Eliot shoved Cory before him as they fled the cloud of dust. They dodged down another side shaft. Eliot grabbed Cory and dropped, shielding him. 

After a long moment, Cory turned his lamp on. They coughed the dust from their lungs. Eliot looked behind them. The shaft was almost completely closed.

“Oh, damn,” he sighed.

*********

Troy freed Blackwell and Nate from where they were trapped. The rest of the plan fell into place and the negligent owner and his bought politician were carted off to prison. 

Hardison was shaking. “I can’t reach him, Nate. I can’t reach El.”

“We’re doing what we can,” said Troy, “but the old section’s almost completely collapsed.”

A shout from the men drew him. One of the missing had been found. He had been in one of the newer sections.

“I never should have let him stay,” Nate’s hand closed on Sophie’s. “I never should have let him stay.”

“You didn’t know how bad the explosion would be,” Sophie looked him in the eye. “It’s not your fault.”

“Besides,” Parker chirped up. “Eliot’s alive.”

“Parker . . .”

“He is!” she insisted. “All we have to do is find him!”  
******

“What now?” asked Cory. 

“Let me have the light,” Elliot swung the beam around the area. “Goes deeper this way; you know if it comes out anywhere?”

Cory shook his head. “I just know this is the old section.”

“Right, looks like there’s only one thing to do.” He used the tail of the pick ax to scratch an arrow pointing down the shaft. He dragged two hash marks across the shaft. “If someone comes looking for us, they’ll see where to go. How old are your batteries?”

“Put in new ones yesterday.” Cory’s youth flashed over his face. “We’ll get out, won’t we?”

“Do my best,” Eliot frowned at the pick ax. With a slam and a kick, he broke off the head from the shaft. “Here, hang on to the handle. If the batteries wear down we can use it for a torch handle.”

“Okay.”

Eliot patted his shoulder. “We’ll make it, you’ll see.”  
******

“The maps end here,” Nate slapped the papers in frustration.

“So few miners went there, no one bothered to add all the shafts,” Troy frowned.

“Troy,” one of the rescuers came to the door of the makeshift nerve center that they'd established in Blackthorn’s office trailer. “Mrs. Johnson is here.”

“Cory’s mother,” Troy groaned. He left the trailer. The Leverage crew watched as the woman ran up to Troy and started crying.

Hardison’s fingers danced over his tablet. “Got to be old records somewhere. That mine’s got to be mapped.”

“Oh, my God,” breathed Sophie as a crew emerged with a sheeted figure on a stretcher.

Nate left the trailer to see.

“Clark,” said one of the miners grimly. “Blackwell’s right hand.”

“He must have planted the bomb,” Nate mused.

“Damn him to hell,” growled another. “My brother’s apt to lose his arm.”

“Where was he found?” Nate asked.

Nate pointed to the map. “They found Clark’s body here; there’s only three side shafts and the miners have cleared two.” He pointed. “This one is too blocked.” The map trailed off into dots.

“That’s the Haunted Shaft,” said Troy, “turns into a natural cave – God only knows where it goes.”

“That’s where Eliot is,” said Parker. “You’ll see.”  
******

Eliot felt the side of the tunnel. “I think we’re in a cave.”

“I thought they were kidding,” Cory eyed the low ceiling. “The older guys, they said there was a shaft that led to a cave. It’s supposed to be haunted – one of the first owners of the mine supposedly got lost in there and never came out.”

Eliot snorted. He chipped another arrow on the wall. He closed his eyes. “Feel that?”

Cory closed his eyes like Eliot had. “It almost feels like – like a draft.”

“There’s air coming in from the outside. Come on – we might have a way out.”

The cave wound back and forth – sometimes angling up, sometimes downward. The faint breath of air drew them on. Cory stopped and leaned against the wall, taking a drink.

“Easy on the water, son,” Eliot cautioned. “We haven’t found any down here.”

Cory closed the bottle. “Think we’re any closer to a way out, Eric.”

Eliot grimaced. “My real name’s Eliot, son. Mister Troy brought in my friends and me to stop Blackwell from killing any more miners like he did two years ago. I think we had him conned – figured out too late that he’d think the mine was more valuable dead than alive. I was supposed to find the bomb.”

“But you found me instead,” Cory whispered. 

“You had a good idea, son,” Eliot said quietly. “Taking care of your family. It wasn’t your fault you got caught in the middle of our problem.”

“You could have left me.”

“I don’t do that.”

They walked in silence for a while. 

“Do you hear water?” Cory whispered.

“I surely do, and the breeze feels stronger. If we’re lucky this may be a sign we’re going to be getting out.”

The tunnel widened into a room. At one end was a dark pool that gleamed in the beam of the miner’s lamp; water trickled down from a crack in the rocks. There were no other openings.

“Well, we’ve got water.” Eliot sighed. “Let’s rest and figure things out.”

A rounded boulder acted as a table. Cory’s mother had put two sandwiches and an apple in the lunchbox. Eliot had two protein bars. They split one of the sandwiches and the apple. The moving water from the wall had a bitter mineral taste, but it was cool and wet.

“Turn off the lamp. We’ll save the battery and rest. Try to sleep.”

“Okay.”

The dark closed in thick and smothering. Eliot heard Cory gulp and stifle what might have been a sob. He moved over until their arms brushed. “You’ll be all right, son. We’ll make it. You’ll see your real eighteenth birthday.”

“I’m -!”

“Sixteen. I know Troy fudged the records because you are not supposed to be working here. I know your Daddy died on your fourteenth birthday.” There was a moment of silence. “You did what you had to.” The silence stretched.

Eliot dozed. He started awake. Something was different.

“Eliot?” Cory whispered. “Is that – is that light?”

Eliot stood up. A thin finger of pale grey light stretched down to the floor. Moonlight – from a full moon he guessed. “Leave the lamp off.” He crossed the cave. He looked up. It was an airshaft almost seven feet off the floor. He stepped to one side and his foot kicked something.

“Cory, bring the lamp!”

The white light obscured the faint glow from the airshaft, but it illuminated the tangle of bones and rotted cloth under it. That much of the legend was real; someone had died here. The skull was broken; the position of the body suggested a fall.

“Tried to climb up the airshaft and fell,” Eliot guessed. Cory swallowed hard. “He tried to do it alone. There’s two of us, and we can help each other.”  
******

“Parker is a genius,” announced Hardison as he burst into Nate’s hotel room. Sophie was inside, her face was flushed, and she appeared to be guarding a bottle of liquor. 

“What?” Nate snapped. His face was also red.

“Remote sensing archaeology,” Hardison brandished his tablet. “You use one of the satellites to look underground. Archaeologists found a whole city in Arabia – Parker found a show about it on the cable and showed me. I can tap a satellite and we can find that cave!”

“Good,” Sophie sighed in relief as Nate bent over the screen. She walked into the bathroom with the bottle.  
******

They had to leave behind the lamp, the lunchbox, their boots and their coveralls. Cory was boosted up first, scrambling for handholds and footholds, then Eliot jumped up. It was slow progress. The grey light faded out – they weren’t sure for how long, but slowly, it began to be replaced by pale gold that grew brighter and brighter.

Cory stopped, panting.

“Keep going,” Eliot encouraged gruffly. “One more push and we’ll make it.”

“You said that two pushes ago.”

“Don’t sass me. We’ve gone too far to go back. Move.”

One handhold crumbled, but Cory grabbed another. Eliot gave him a push and he steadied himself. The next grab was the lip of the shaft and the two men were soon sprawled on the grass.

“That,” Cory panted. “Is the most beautiful sky I’ve ever seen.”

“Amen,” agreed Eliot. “Amen.”

A dog started barking. Two bloodhounds, followed by a sheriff’s deputy came up to them. There was much confusion and shouting after that. They were taken back to town to be fussed over and feted. 

Hardison was preening like a peacock. He’d found the hillside where the airshaft was by hacking a government satellite. His printout of the underground cave had given the searchers the area to look in. His back was slapped, and the praise was going to his head. Cory’s mother kissed Eliot in the middle of the confusion, and he didn’t mind it a bit.

“Get your GED,” he advised Cory. “You’re going to be just fine.”

He almost regretted saying good-bye – but there was work to do.


End file.
